


sunshine and paint

by boxerzayn



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, This is DUMB, Writer AU, i dont know what plumbers do rlly they fix pipes and stuff i think? right, i love painter!zayn!!!!!!!!, its in paris and nobody speaks french what, niall is a plumber?????????????, painter au, this is real dumb, whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 22:31:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boxerzayn/pseuds/boxerzayn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>niall and zayn meet in paris and niall is a silly plumber and zayn is quiet and draws and writes and drinks is coffe without milk and they’re in love and its paris and yeah</p>
            </blockquote>





	sunshine and paint

**Author's Note:**

> i dont own them bla bla bla sorry for the over use of adjectives to describe these two and for the lack of uppercase letters

paris is beautiful in the summer when zayn mooves to the little apartment his uncle ownes there. he’s been looking forward to it for years, since he was sixteen he’d ben sure that’s what he wanted to do -move to paris and write poetry and paint beautiful people and sleep- and now. now he’s finally here, on the train station in the middle of the city and the sun is out and it smells like smoke and summer and ice cream and fruit and wind and clothes and there are so many people running around on the streets in front of him that zayn just stands there for a couple of seconds with his suitcase behind him; observes.  
the city is bright this time of year. some days the sun won’t come out but the sky is always light and all the people walk around in light grey suits or beige trench coats and even though zayn is wearing his black skinny jeans he feels like a part of it all, even though he’s a stranger. he feels like a part of paris and all the strange people who live there, nobody knows anybody else, they just know where their heading and zayn knows where he’s heading. he thinks.

///

autumn in paris is peaceful. zayn hasn’t learned the language but he’s visited all the museums in town and drawn sketches with grey sharp pens on white thick paper and he’s really happy with the outcome. the apartment is nice, a little empty still, even with the furniture and all, and it’s quite cold but it’s light and it’s perfect for him. zayn has learned wich cafés on the blocks around his apartment make good coffee and he always drinks it black, as he takes his morning stroll around the city with his sheets of paper and the grey pen.

///

november rolls in and zayn calls his mother when the nights are dark and the apartment feels cold. he talks about the nice food and the museums and the beautiful language, and that no, he doesn’t feel lonely (he does, a little but he isn’t sure if he misses the people from home or if it’s just that he has a lot less to do now, and that he’s not really used to it) and he asks how his sisters are doing, and his mother says yeah, they’re fine. “whaliya would very much like to talk to you, though”.  
he paints his little sister that night, in his bed with the yellow lamp on, and he looks out through the big window which is now filled with darkness and space and the thick night air, and the painting turns out a lot darker than he expected.  
he hangs it up on his wall though, and the room feels a little less lonely.

///

he meets niall, the irish blond bright boy, in the middle of december. one of his pipes break and he calls a plumber. the man on the phone says he’ll send someone, and zayn’s a bit scared he’ll have to explain for the plumber in french what’s wrong, but when he opens the door there’s a young irish boy outside with a bright crooked smile and an irish accent and he sighs, relieved.  
the bloke’s pretty nice, actually. he has eyes that are too soft for the blue colour, and hair that needs to be coloured at the roots and teeth that need to be tightened up and straightened back by braces. zayn think’s he’s quite pretty, though, with his too-big blue plumber suit and too-loud laughter for the late hour.  
he makes zayn smile, and laugh; keeps talking even though zayn barely says anything.  
he makes the boy tea though, on his stove, and after niall is done plumbing, zayn thanks him with another cup.  
they talk about personal things, zayn tells niall about how much he misses his little sisters and how he used to take care of them so much, about how dark paris suddenly became when the winter came without any snow to brighten it up, and niall laughs in just the right places and makes zayn comfortable.  
niall tells zayn about his family back in ireland, his flat a couple of blocks away that is now a total mess since him and his boyfriend josh broke up.  
zayn is sure it’ll be awkward after that, but niall just shrugs (he does that alot) and keeps talking and yeah, it just flows. zayn shows him his sketches and paintings (“is that your sister?” “yeah, yeah it is. she’s prettier in real life”) and niall tells him that they’re great, and that “you’ll have to draw me some day, mysterious english painter zayn.”  
zayn laughs and agrees and it doesn’t feel strange giving (the even more) mysterious irish plumber niall his phone number.

///

zayn laughs and it doesn’t feel stange taking morning strolls with niall and the dumb irish boy has convinced him; coffee is fucking better with milk.  
they walk in the mornings before they both go to work (zayn found a job at the newspaper shop down the street) and they walk in the evening, when it’s too late and too dark and the ony thing zayn can see and feel is nialls blue too-kind eyes and his big soft sweaty hand in his own.

///

they get compeletly wasted every weekend at the irish pub zayn first refused to go to, and sometimes they get a beer or two on the wednesdays or mondays too if it’s too dark out. they do a lot of lazy kissing and some urgent kissing too.(sometimes zayn cuts his lip on one of nialls teeth but it’s okay because everytime he tastes blood he tastes niall)  
niall tells him that the sheets in his apartment smell less like ireland and saltwater and beer and more like smoke and gucci cologne every time zayn stays over for the night, but “it’s okay, zayn. i like it. heck, i’d start fucking smoking just to have the smell of you around me all the time”.  
and that’s way too cheasy for zayn, but it’s sweet, niall is sweet, like a new candy zayn has never eaten beofore and now his life before the bright sunshine boy seems numb and grey and tasteless.  
that’s what he is; a sunshine boy. ‘cause even though it’s february and it’s dark every fucking walk they take, mornings and evenings, niall is always bright and always shiny and always so loud.  
zayn couldn’t get away from him even if he wanted. atleast not for more than a little while. he’s like the sun.

///

zayn thinks about that story a lot, (because he likes to use metaphores to explain love) about the sun who died every night to let the moon breathe.  
zayn is the moon, he’s sure. he’s dull and pale and dreamy and lonely and he’s conevered in darkness, but he has his sun, niall. and he needs niall to be able to breathe. he didn’t need him before, did just fine with his paintings and crumbeling poetry that didn’t even make sense until he met the sunshine boy.  
but now niall is the air he breathes and the land he stands on and the smile on his lips and the power in his bones. all that is niall, niall, niall. zayn wonders what his head said before it said niall, niall, niall.

///

spring flies by because zayn is in love, and he drinks his coffee with milk and has paintings of a blond boy all over his walls, and doesn’t sleep as much but when he does it’s much more peaceful.  
they have a lot of sex and they kiss alot and they laugh alot and cry alot too, when they’re watching grey slow french films that they don’t really understand other than that they are very very depressive. he’s alive, they’re alive together, like a flower springing up from the dark soil that the winter was, and zayn is so happy.

///

in may niall sells apartment to and old french lady and mooves his things in with zayn. their sheets mix in the bed and their hair mix on the pillows; black and white and beautiful. niall buys breakfast every morning and teaches zayn french in the shower and zayn helps niall with the buttons of his blue plumber clothing and they get drunk every wednesday and friday and saturday, now.  
niall becomes friends with a boy called liam who’s new at work and a boy called harry styles that works at the flowe shop and his boyfriend and they’re all british, he explains, and is determened that they all meet.  
it’s nice, having a good talk with someone english exept his mother, zayn thinks, and the other lads are really good lads.  
harry has very curly hair and louis has a few cool tattoos and liam has worried eyebrows and zayn thinks, in his romantic heart, that maybe the five of them are some weird sort of five-way-soulmates. he tells niall about it and niall laughs but it’s a friendly laughter. “yeah, yeah. maybe. probably were in a boyband with eachother in another life.”  
zayn smiles and takes a sip of his coffe “fucking backstreet boys would we be” and they don’t speak after that until they meet the eiffel tour.

///

zayn draws the eiffel tour alot. some days when it’s rainy and the sheets get a little wet and the colours get a little wrinny, when paris is grey and nialls eyes too, even though they’re still kind.  
some days he paints the eiffel tour when it’s sunny and not as much tourists out as it should be at such a beautiful place in july. the colours are bright green and blue and pink (because of the british and german tourists and their funny pink-red skin) and niall always tells him how beautiful the paintings are.

sometimes niall is small and curls up into a ball next to zayn in the bed, refuses to wake up in the mornings to go to work and calls in sick to play fifa all day instead.  
sometimes niall is strong though, and zayn fragile, and he takes care of zayn when he’s ill, makes soup on some irish recipe, fixes the pipes when they’re broken.  
“not even a year since i fixed these the first time, zayn. d’ya remember that day? fucking fate or something.”  
“yeah” zayn mumbles, smiles. thats what he always does. it hasn’t even been a year since they first met that day with the broken pipes and he’s already got wrincles under his eyes from smiling so much. (“they’re crinkles, not wrincles. you’re not getting old, zayn”)  
but it doesn’t matter if he gets old and wrinkly because he has his sunshine boy and when you have sunshine you have life.


End file.
